Iran unveiled that it launched a massive drone exercise to showcase its military and technological prowess on Thursday. Given that it involves some 50 Iranian-made drones and is officially named "Way to Jerusalem" exercises (or "Towards al-Quds 1"), it has been met with alarm in Israel especially considering many were armed drones operating along key choke points in the Persian Gulf.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) described the military drills as Iran's largest exercise of its kind to date, and occurred mostly near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. State-run Fars and Tasnim news agencies described the operation as including, “for the first time, 50 Iranian drones on the RQ-170 [US Sentinel] model operated with a number of assault and combat drones."